Suppose you want to host your static website on Amazon S3. You have registered a domain,
for example, example.com, and you want requests for
http://www.example.com and http://example.com to be served
from your Amazon S3 content.

Whether you have an existing static website that you now want to host on Amazon S3 or you
are starting from scratch, this example will help you host websites on Amazon S3.

Before You Begin

As you walk through the steps in this example, note that you will work with the following
services:

Domain registrar of your choice– If you do not already
have a registered domain name, such as example.com, you will need to create
and register one with a registrar of your choice. You can typically register a domain
for a small yearly fee. For procedural information about registering a domain name, see
the web site of the registrar

Amazon S3– You will use Amazon S3 to create buckets,
upload a sample website page, configure permissions so everyone can see the content, and
then configure the buckets for website hosting. In this example, because you want to
allow requests for both http://www.example.com and
http://example.com, you will create two buckets; however, you will host
content in only one bucket. You will configure the other Amazon S3 bucket to redirect
requests to the bucket that hosts the content.

Amazon Route 53– You will configure Amazon Route 53 as
your DNS provider. You will create a hosted zone in Amazon Route 53 for your domain and
configure applicable DNS records. If you are switching from an existing DNS provider,
you will need to ensure that you have transferred all of the DNS records for your
domain.

As you walk through this example, a basic familiarity with domains, Domain Name System
(DNS), CNAME records, and A records would be helpful. A detailed explanation of these
concepts is beyond the scope of this guide, but your domain registrar should provide any
basic information that you need.

Note

All the steps in this example use example.com as a
domain name. You will need to replace this domain name with the one you
registered.

Step 1: Register a Domain

If you already have a registered domain, you can skip this step. If you are new to
hosting a website, your first step is to register a domain, such as
example.com, with a registrar of your choice.

After you have chosen a registrar, you will register your domain name according to the
instructions at the registrar’s website. For a list of registrar web sites that you can
use to register your domain name, go to ICANN.org.

When you have a registered domain name, your next task is to create and configure Amazon S3
buckets for website hosting and to upload your website content.

Step 2: Create and Configure Buckets and Upload Data

In this example, to support requests from both the root domain such as
example.com and subdomain such as www.example.com, you
will create two buckets. One bucket will contain the content and you will configure the
other bucket to redirect requests. You perform the following tasks in Amazon S3 console
to create and configure your website:

Create two buckets.

Configure these buckets for website hosting.

Test the Amazon S3 provided bucket website endpoint.

Step 2.1: Create Two Buckets

The bucket names must match the names of the website that you are hosting. For example, to
host your example.com website on Amazon S3, you would create a bucket
named example.com. To host a website under
www.example.com, you would name the bucket
www.example.com. In this example, your website will support requests
from both example.com and www.example.com.

In this step, you will sign in to the Amazon S3 console with your AWS account credentials
and create the following two buckets.

example.com

www.example.com

Note

To create the buckets for this example, follow these steps. As you walk through this
example, substitute the domain name that you registered for
example.com.

Create two buckets that match your domain name. One of the bucket names should include the
subdomain www, For instance,
example.com and
www.example.com.

For step-by-step instructions, go to Creating a Bucket in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Console User Guide.

Upload your website data to the example.com
bucket.

You will host your content out of the root domain bucket
(example.com), and you will
redirect requests for
www.example.com to the root
domain bucket. Note that you can store content in either bucket. For this
example you will host content in
example.com bucket. The
content can be text files, family photos, videos—whatever you want. If you
have not yet created a website, then you only need one file for this
example. You can upload any file. For example, you can create a file using
the following HTML and upload it the bucket. The file name of the home page
of a website is typically index.html, but you can give it any name. In a
later step, you will provide this file name as the index document name for
your website.

Configure permissions for your objects to make them publicly accessible.

Attach the following bucket policy to the
example.com bucket substituting
the name of your bucket for example.com. For
step-by-step instructions to attach a bucket policy, go to Editing Bucket Permissions in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Console User Guide.

You now have two buckets, example.com and
www.example.com, and you have uploaded your
website content to the example.com bucket. In the
next step, you will configure www.example.com to
redirect requests to your example.com bucket. By
redirecting requests you can maintain only one copy of your website content
and both visitors who specify “www” in their browsers and visitors that only
specify the root domain will both be routed to the same website content in
your example.com bucket.

Step 2.2: Configure Buckets
for Website Hosting

When you configure a bucket for website hosting, you can access the website using the
Amazon S3 assigned bucket website endpoint.

In this step, you will configure both buckets for website hosting. First, you will configure
example.com as a website and then
you'll configure www.example.com to redirect
all requests to the example.com
bucket.

To configure example.com bucket for website
hosting

Configure example.com bucket for website hosting.
In the Index Document box, type the name
that you gave your index page.

For step-by-step-instructions, go to Managing Bucket Website Configuration in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Console User Guide. Make a note of the
URL for the website endpoint. You will need it later.

To test the website, enter the Endpoint URL in your browser.

Your browser will display the index document page. Next, you will configure
www.example.com bucket to
redirect all requests for
www.example.com to
example.com.

To redirect requests from www.example.com to
example.com

In the Amazon S3 console, in the Buckets list, right-click
www.example.com and then
click Properties.

Under Static Website Hosting, click Redirect all requests
to another host name. In the Redirect all
requests box, type
example.com.

To test the website, enter the Endpoint URL in your browser.

Your request will be redirected and the browser will display the index document for
example.com.

The following Amazon S3 bucket website endpoints are accessible to any internet user:

example.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com

http://www.example.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com

Now you will do additional configuration to serve requests from the domain you registered
in the preceding step. For example, if you registered a domain example.com, you want
to serve requests from the following URLs :

http://example.com

http://www.example.com

In the next step, we will use Amazon Route 53 to enable customers to use the URLs above to
navigate to your site.

Step 3: Create and
Configure Amazon Route 53 Hosted Zone

Now you will configure Amazon Route 53 as your Domain Name System (DNS) provider. You must use
Amazon Route 53 if you want to serve content from your root domain, such as
example.com. You will create a hosted
zone, which holds the DNS records associated with your domain:

An alias record that maps the domain example.com to the
example.com bucket. This is the bucket that you configured as a website
endpoint in step 2.2.

Another alias record that maps the subdomain www.example.com to the www.example.com bucket. You configured this bucket
to redirect requests to the example.com bucket in step 2.2.

The following example shows the hosted zone created for the example.com
domain. Write down the Amazon Route 53 name servers (NS) for this domain. You will need
them later.

Step 3.2: Add Alias Records
for example.com and www.example.com

The alias records that you add to the hosted zone for your domain will map
example.com and
www.example.com to the corresponding
Amazon S3 buckets. Instead of using IP addresses, the alias records use the Amazon S3
website endpoints. Amazon Route 53 maintains a mapping between the alias records and the
IP addresses where the Amazon S3 buckets reside.

The following screenshot shows the alias record for
example.com as an illustration. You
will also need to create an alias record for
www.example.com.

To enable this hosted zone, you must use Amazon Route 53 as the DNS server for your domain
example.com.
Before you switch, if you are moving an existing website to Amazon S3, you must
transfer DNS records associated with your domain example.com to the hosted zone that
you created in Amazon Route 53 for your domain. If you are creating a new website,
you can go directly to step 4.

Note

Creating, changing, and deleting resource record sets take time to
propagate to the Route 53 DNS servers. Changes generally propagate to all
Route 53 name servers in a couple of minutes. In rare circumstances,
propagation can take up to 30 minutes.

Before you switch to Amazon Route 53 as your DNS provider, you must transfer any remaining
DNS records from your current DNS provider, including MX records, CNAME records, and
A records, to Amazon Route 53. You don't need to transfer the following
records:

NS records– Instead of transferring these, you replace their values with the name
server values that are provided by Amazon Route 53.

SOA record– Amazon Route 53 provides this record in the hosted zone with a default
value.

Migrating required DNS records is a critical step to ensure the continued
availability of all the existing services hosted under the domain name.

Step 4: Switch to Amazon Route 53 as
Your DNS Provider

To switch to Amazon Route 53 as your DNS provider, you must go to your current DNS provider
and update the name server (NS) record to use the name servers in your delegation set in
Amazon Route 53.

Go to your DNS provider site and update the NS record with the delegation set values of the
hosted zone as shown in the following Amazon Route 53 console screenshot. For more
information, go to Updating Your DNS Service's Name Server Records in Amazon Route 53 Developer Guide.

When the transfer to Amazon Route 53 is complete, there are tools that you can use to verify the
name server for your domain has indeed changed. On a Linux computer, you can use the
dig DNS lookup utility. For example, this dig
command:

dig +recurse +trace www.example.com any

returns the following output (only partial output is shown). The output shows the same
four name servers the name servers on Amazon Route 53 hosted zone you created for
example.com domain.